Wetherby Racecourse optimistic for jumps season despite small field for opener

Seven races are scheduled for the jumps curtain-raiser at the Yorkshire track this afternoon, but only 36 horses are declared, with the feature race, the Bobby Renton Handicap Chase to be contested by just three.

Sanderson has never seen it so low in the near two-decades he has been chief executive and clerk of the course. At its highpoint, there were nearly three times the number of declarations for the traditional mid-October opener.

With the headline Charlie Hall Chase two-day meeting on the horizon in a fortnight’s time, Sanderson believes it could remedy itself quickly.

But while looking ahead to another season at Wetherby with overall optimism, the small field does bring cause for minor concern.

“We’re a bit thin on runners, if I’m honest with you,” he said of Wednesday’s meeting.

“I’m not entirely sure why, we’ve got 36 declarations. On this day in the past during my time here we’ve had full stables of 91 runners, so we’re well down on runners.

“Whether it’s symptomatic of racing at the minute because of the uncertainty over the betting tax, the prize money, and various other factors, or even the squeeze on the pound in every one’s pocket, I don’t know.”

The going is good for today’s racing, but Sanderson does not believe it is the ground that is making trainers cautious.

“Whilst we’ve had a really warm summer we had a lot of rain in September and October,” he reasoned.

“We’ve had the better part of 150mm of rain, so the ground is in fantastic condition and I was hoping we might have seen a few more runners given the state of the ground.

“I’ve been keeping my eye on jumps fields’ sizes over the summer and they haven’t been particularly high, but I understand that in the summer, especially after having one of the warmest summers in a long time across the country.

“Our colleagues at Stratford, Newton Abbot, Hexham, Worcester, have been low on entrants but have been struggling like mad to get the ground ready.

“It’s hard to produce good soft ground in July when it’s 30-odd degrees so you don’t expect to see huge fields in the height of the summer.

“But I would have hoped by October we would have done. Maybe trainers are holding their horses back for the depths of winter, that’s the positive way of looking at it.

“It doesn’t hurt to have a few smaller fields like tomorrow to make sure everything is in good working order for the Charlie Hall.”

The £100,000 bet365 Charlie Hall Chase takes place on Saturday, November 1, one of the features of the Wetherby calendar.

Sanderson said: “I’ve heard various rumours on the circuit of people who are coming. I never get too excited about rumours because lots can happen in between.

“All being well, we’re not drawing from a huge pool of horses for the three-mile chase so we can probably identify five or six or seven we should get, and we might get some surprises in there too.”

Despite the small field for today’s meeting, ticket sales are up and the overall audience picture gives Sanderson further cause of optimism.

“It’s a tough environment, I won’t lie,” he admitted. “Last year, whilst we only lost one fixture which is really pleasing after losing four the previous year, the squeeze on the pound for the man in the street means we are fighting for that pound like everyone is.

“But we probably had our best year since coming back from Covid, even if we’re not getting 2018 and 2019 numbers, which were good.

“Our advanced sales for today are ahead of where we were 12 months ago. Things have picked up for racing over the summer, hopefully it can continue over the winter.”